கோபல்லபுரத்து மக்கள் (Gopallapurathu makkal)-கி ராஜநாராயணன்(K.Rajanarayanan)

                                       
This story starts at where the first book "Gopalla grammam" ends.Now the India is under the British empire.Gopallapuram also changed lot.New people with new profession unknown to the village people came and settled.There was a school set up by the government and the kids started going outside the village to get education.

Love Story:
The romance between Kittappan and Achinthalu was told poetically.The author brings the village setup beautifully when he describes the enemity of their families, its true even today that for a simple reason the families fight and they remains that way for a long time in village.Unfortunately this enemity separate Kittappan and Achinthalu,both got married to differen people.As usual fate made them to unite again.The sequence of events relating to their relationship was natural.

Then the author details the another custom in the village, the temple bull. This is/was a very interesting and unique custom those days (in till today!!),anyone can leave a calf which is strong and unique to the temple , those days they have a method to identify these kind of calves.This calf can eat any thing in any home as well as in field, no one will beat or do any harm to it.In this story the bull became very famous and proud asset to the people of Gopallapuram.But the same bull due to it adolescence started causing problem to people,scaring and hurting them.Then comes the act of castration.This act was narrated beautifully.I liked the way the author explains the minute details of the bull life and bull fighting.

The story of country liquor :
For Gopallapuram people this drink is god given, in fact they use this liquid in/after child birth.This liquid was given us votive to gods.The author wonderfully describes the behavior of different drinkers.when i was reading this part ,i thought of alcohol drinkers in my native,they too have a  peculiar behaviors.Those days this drink was part of their life.

The story of "Thommarigal"(தொம்மரிகள்):
Those people travel all around the country,they had their own life style.They were unique.They used to come once or twice in a year to Gopallapuram.The girl who got married to the 'kalai' tree was their head, she can choose her partner on her own and have multiple partners and she was called 'Pangaarupatchi(பங்காருபட்சி)' .This is very unique folk story i ever heard.

Freedom Struggle:
The youngsters who went outside for their education brought lots of new things to the village which included wearing shirts,cutting the backside hair,usage of soap,pens etc and most importantly reading papers. Those things made the people to know the outside world and started thinking about the freedom struggle elsewhere in India.The author beautifully brings the thought patterns of those people specially the youth.Its true that many of our leaders did not do enough to bring peace when it matters in those time.The Royal Indian navy workers strike was the turning point in bringing all the whole of India together in freedom struggle.The Story ends with Indian independence.

The whole book was written beautifully capturing the the ordinary people's life.The author has researched a lot and it is evident throught out the book.This book got Sahitya academy award.I had a great time reading these books.கோபல்லபுரத்து மக்கள் (Gopallapurathu makkal) was a very good reading experience for me.I learnt lots of new things specially the life style of those people and our culture.One of the true classics of Tamil literature.